Stabat Mater: mp3

January 16, 2012

For someone who wanted a recording of the simple Stabat Mater, here is one I just made: Stabat Mater. Hymnus.

To find the music, I recommend the Parish Book of Chant (free online) pg. 143, since it has a translation; however, it is very common; the Liber Usualis(also free online) includes it with its collection of hymns etc. in the back, on pg. 1874.

The twenty-verse text of the Stabat Mater is used as the sequence for the feast of the Seven Sorrows of the B. V. M. on Sept. 15. (This feast is the day after the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Sept. 14, as well as, oddly enough, the octave of the Nativity of the B. V. M., Sept. 8.) As a sequence, the Stabat Mater has a different melody from the one above, in which pairs of verses go to the same tune as is typical of sequences. Youtube here.

However, in a Liber or Antiphonale, you can find at the end of March another Feast of the Seven Sorrows (fancy that!) to be done on Feria VI (Friday, the sixth day) of Passion week. The sequence version of Stabat Mater gets used here again at Mass, but interestingly enough, vs. 1-10 are also used for the vespers hymn, and vs. 15-20 for the Lauds hymn. However, the melody is not the sequence melody, but rather the familiar hymn one. Thus we may see where (at least nowadays) the hymn version fits into the office. Also, we have two different ready made “cut” versions, for when there is not time to sing 20 verses.

Incidentally, there is a nifty 3-part Stabat Mater by a fellow hight Guiseppe Tartini which we tryed to do part of last year. It alternates polyphonic verses with the chant. Music can be found in one of Ravanello’s anthologies on MusicaSacra here, or you can look it up on youtube.

By the way, when I post mp3’s, is the quality good enough to be useful, and do they work?

Because if they don’t, I should like to know. If they do, I can easily make more.

Thank you so much for making this! I looked all over for a simple chant version of the Stabat last year so that I could teach my children all the verses, but I just couldn’t find one. This is *exactly* what I was looking for!

And yes, I would love it if you did other recordings. Are you taking requests? 😉 Two songs that I have particularly been looking for plain chant versions of: Resonet in Laudibus (like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQx5LsTfSx8) and Veni Emmanuel. I know it’s not exactly the right season for those, but they would be so helpful to me come next Advent/Christmas!